Those of us aching for a 300-page treatise about the crippling implications of the "build your own scramble" at Local 188 won't, at first glance, find a great deal of solace in Jonah Lehrer's second book, How We Decide. Like Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Outliers, Lehrer examines our capacity for success and failure through the lens of figures in extraordinary circumstances: a quarterback in the clutch during the Super Bowl, a smokejumper trying to save his hide in a blazing wildfire, a world-famous opera singer who loses her confidence and can no longer sing. If this approach seems somewhat derivative and formulaic, Lehrer's grasp on emerging revelations

in neuroscience affords his book a great utility. Even if we'll never face an onrush of 300-pound linebackers, we still need to know when and whether to trust our first instincts — and when we shouldn't.

Lehrer, just 27, is becoming something of a wunderkind in the realm of popular science. A Rhodes Scholar, New Hampshire resident, and editor-at-large at Seed magazine, he's written for the New Yorker and numerous other publications since the release of his 2007 book, Proust Was a Neuroscientist (see "Senses Come Alive," by Christopher Gray, February 15, 2008). That book's thesis (many of history's great artists created prescient work explaining how our brains operated decades or centuries before science could) was compelling, if somewhat anecdotal (Proust was neither a neuroscientist nor an influence on the field). How We Decide has a similar structure to Proust — anecdote, neurological explanation of anecdote, how this new knowledge can inform and benefit our lives — but its intent is more practical, and Lehrer excels at prescribing ways to approach both everyday and exceptional dilemmas without seeming pedantic.

The warring factions in the brain's frontal lobe make it a wonder that we're ever able to make decisions at all. This is the rational area of our brain, unique to humans and (to an extent) primates, where our common sense and emotional urges duke it out. The neurons that transmit the chemical dopamine, supplying wisdom based on experience, have to cooperate with our powerful (and bustling) prefrontal cortex, which regulates our impulses and self-awareness, which is fielding concerns from our amygdala, which is naturally averse to loss, and so on.

Weaknesses or failures of any of these areas can be disastrous. Lehrer says scientists now suspect that schizophrenics suffer from hyperactive dopamine neurons, those with reduced activity in the amygdala cannot empathize with — or even perceive — emotions in others (it's a common trait of serial killers), and as for the prefrontal cortex: it's what's destroyed in a frontal lobotomy. Lehrer uses dramatic examples of these areas in extremes in order to shed light on our mind's activity in more quotidian circumstances. The gambling addict is responding inappropriately to the same rush of dopamine as the shopper compelled to buy a pair of jeans she doesn't need because they're 50 percent off. Despite all this competition and all of the mistakes we make, the brain is miraculously and rather mysteriously able to "supervise itself."

How to create a readable future The actual future is a collaboration between nearly seven billion people worldwide. But creating a future can be a fun indoor sport for you and your friends.

Reaching a new frontier Shetterly's new memoir, Made for You and Me: Going West, Going Broke, Finding Home is the story of hardships — financial, familial, emotional — not usually the stuff that inspires switching places.

Wound to precision The phrase "perfect summer beach read" doesn't make much sense to me. A week at the water is the right moment for me to put down a diverting thriller and indulge in a novel that necessitates those rarest of commodities: unencumbered time and attention.

Review: My Afternoons with Margueritte European cinema doesn't have as many sure-fire formulas as Hollywood, but the one described, I think, by Pauline Kael as the "lonely child, clean old man" scenario has long endured.

State struggles, Gina good! I don't know the solution to our state's fiscal and political problems. If I did, I'd probably run for public office.

The Oracle Engine The lizard of the wasteland, so dazzling to the eye, so rapid to flee or to strike, may grow to its full maturity only in the most brutal of deserts, where no dew falls to drink and where the sun is unrelenting. So, some say, was Marcus Furius Medullinus Machinator, he who first invented the oracle engines...

TEN YEARS, A WAVE | September 26, 2014 As the festival has evolved, examples of Fowlie’s preferred breed of film—once a small niche of the documentary universe—have become a lot more common, a lot more variegated, and a lot more accomplished.

GIRLS (AND BOYS) ON FILM | July 11, 2014 The Maine International Film Festival, now in its 17th year in Waterville, remains one of the region’s more ambitious cultural institutions, less bound by a singular ambition than a desire to convey the breadth and depth of cinema’s past and present. (This, and a healthy dose of music and human-interest documentaries.) On that account, MIFF ’14 is an impressive achievement, offering area filmgoers its best program in years. With so much to survey, let’s make haste with the recommendations. (Particularly emphatic suggestions are marked in bold print.)

AMERICAN VALUES | June 11, 2014 The Immigrant seamlessly folds elements of New York history and the American promise into a story about the varieties of captivity and loyalty.

CHARACTER IS POLITICAL | April 10, 2014 Kelly Reichardt, one of the most admired and resourceful voices in American independent cinema, appears at the Portland Museum of Art Friday night to participate in a weekend-long retrospective of her three most recent films.

LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX | April 09, 2014 Throughout its two volumes and four hours of explicit sexuality, masochism, philosophical debate, and self-analysis, Nymphomaniac remains the steadfast vision of a director talking to himself, and assuming you’ll be interested enough in him to listen and pay close attention.